Pillars of the Community: The Transfer of Local Authority Heritage Assets (English Heritage, 2010)

English Heritage and other organisations in the heritage sector, including the Prince’s Regeneration Trust, have joined forces with the Asset Transfer Unit to pool their experience. This document is a summary of the web-based guidance note they have endorsed and is intended for both local authorities and community organisations. It will also be relevant to transfers from central government and other public sector bodies.

Download ‘Pillars of the Community: The Transfer of Local Authority Heritage Assets.

Managing Heritage Assets (Government Historic Estate Unit, 2009)

This is best practice guidance for government departments on the use of periodic inspections, forward work plans and asset management programmes.

Download 'English Heritage - Managing Heritage Assets' (PDF, 580KB)

The Disposal of Heritage Assets: Guidance note for government departments and non-departmental public bodies (Government Historic Estate Unit, 2010)

This guidance note provides the elements of best practice for the public sector as a whole, including local authorities, health trusts and the police.

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Managing Local Authority Heritage Assets: some guiding principles for decision-makers (English Heritage, 2003)

This government-endorsed guidance is an excellent publication and the principles it articulates are as equally applicable today as they were in 2003. It is intended for the key decision makers responsible for the funding and care of council-owned heritage assets. The aim of the guidance is to promote and encourage appropriate standards in the management of these assets and high quality design in new work related to them.

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Heritage Works (English Heritage)

The study provides a practical step-by step guide on how to bring forward a heritage-led regeneration project, identifying common pitfalls and ways of overcoming or avoiding these. It also provides a pointer to further detailed information sources.

Application of the Adaptive Re-use Potential Model: A Historic Building Case Study (International Journal of Strategic Property Management, December 2007 Langston, Craig; Shen, Li-Yin)

This paper explores the relationships between financial, environmental and social parameters associated with building adaptive reuse by way of a case study. A new model predicting adaptive reuse potential is applied to a heritage building in Hong Kong known as Lui Seng Chun. Such application can assist in the transformation of the building and property industry towards more sustainable practices, strategies and outcomes, by providing a means by which the building owners can identify and rank existing buildings that have high potential for adaptive reuse.

Lose or Re-use: Managing Heritage Sustainability (Lydia Wilson, 2007)

This booklet examines the role of historic buildings in providing sustainable solutions in Northern Ireland, in particular in catering for housing needs. It looks at different aspects of how historic buildings of all types can help us live more sustainably and contrasts between the cost of reusing old buildings, and that of demolishing them and building anew. Each chapter concludes with a case study.

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Built to Last: The Sustainable Reuse of Buildings (Carrig Conservation et al, 2004)

A study commissioned by Dublin City Council, which compared the costs of reusing a variety of existing buildings with the cost of demolishing and building anew. It found that constructing new buildings on brownfield sites was generally more expensive than retaining and reusing existing buildings; that, depending on the extent of repairs needed, overall development costs could be halved by reusing an existing building and that a refurbished existing building performs better in environmental terms than a hypothetical newly-constructed building on the same site.

Download 'Built to Last: The Sustainable Reuse of Buildings' (PDF, 1.2MB)